A Changing Season 

 

Prologue 

It has often been said that the ultimate direction of your life can be traced back to one significant moment in time. For my mother that moment may have been the day she married my father – or, perhaps, it was the day he left her for the second time. For my father it was the very instant his father died.

I sometimes wonder if my life changed the day I began my journey, or the day I first began to comprehend the clarity I obtained from it. I thought of turning back at one point, but by then truth, secrets and deceptions were so entwined that I had lost track of where I was.  And when the direction of your life is about to abruptly change, you never seeing it coming. Even when you do finally recognize it you can’t possibly foresee where it will lead. I suppose the day that set my life on its present course was the day my father came to see me … for the last time. 

A Changing Season

...(Excerpts from Chapter One) 

 

As the car turned the corner and headed towards the highway Maria could see Ray sitting at the bus stop. He looked the same as all those mornings -- years before their divorce -- when he would wait to catch the commuter bus to work. She saw the bus approaching and hurried to reach him before he boarded. He noticed her pull along side the curb. She rolled down the window of the little Honda and shouted to him, "Ray, it was a shock to see you after all these years. Please, come back to the house and let's talk."  He knew by her presence there that she had looked inside the envelope. He also knew that his son not being there meant he had seen the contents of the envelope as well.  "Stubborn, just like when I was his age" Ray thought to himself.  

 

He started towards the bus then stopped, turned, and looked back at her and hesitated -- as if taking one final look at her. “I can’t do that  Maria" is all he said, then continued up the steps. Maria stood there bewildered as the bus pulled off. She heard a loud gong echo in her ear. It seemed out of place. A sudden flash of light was the last thing she remembered before she was knocked to the ground from the explosion; her body shredded like paper from the bus debris.  

 

Everything was suddenly quiet. What remained of the bus lay on its side like a dead animal. As though lions had ripped at for hours, there were torn fragments of metal that lay littered on the highway -- as if waiting for the Vultures to come and remove what little remained. Bur there were no Vultures, there was only a graveyard of scrap metal and burnt flesh that eliminated any traces of the surrounding Evergreen in the air. Oddly, there were no on-lookers, no cars, no movement of any kind. Just a strange heaviness in the air.  

 

The gonging sound that Maria heard continued until it pierced deep into Ray Jr’s sleep. His eyes opened; terror on his face. He sat straight up in his bed unsure of what had just happened. He was sweating, breathing heavy as he gazed around the small bedroom. Everything seemed to be in place. He heard the doorbell and then his mother whisked past his room, “Jay, honey, please answer the door.” She’s not dead, he thought. His father was still gone, he knew, but the rest of it was only some weird dream that fused reality with fiction that had no meaning. With relief, his heart still racing, he collapsed back into the bed.

 

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 .... continued later in Chapter One:

 

Juliann returned to her old wooden chair and began to type once more. Her fingers danced along the keyboard. Like a chorus of crickets they created a symphony of ideas that echoed throughout the country field, as a smile now eased up the left side of her face. She never knew from the start how the story would unfold; where it would lead or how the characters would develop. Sometimes she felt as though she was just an observer of a life in progress, rather than the author of it. What would now happen to Ray? She didn’t know but was anxious to find out and knew that that the story would reveal itself to her. Maybe tomorrow, she thought. It would come from out of the early morning dew and she would be there to bare witness and then record it all. 

 

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